Episode 143:Ancient Chinese Jokes 4 – The Patience And The Impatience

Laugh is a world language. Today we will continue the series about ancient Chinese jokes and hope you can laugh or smile about it.

One of the most famous book of jokes is called XiaoFu 笑府 by the author Feng Menglong 冯梦龙, who was a Chinese writer and poet of the Ming dynasty, between the year 1574 ~ 1646. The book contains almost 600 jokes. We will tell one joke about the patience and one joke about the impatience.

The first joke says, there was a person who was extremely patient. On a winter day, he was at a bonfire with a group of friends. He saw one guy’s clothes got on fire. He said, “there’s something I have seen for a while and would like to talk about it. But I know you get impatience and frustrated easily. If I don’t say, it might hurt. I think it is fine to talk about it. It is also fine not to talk about it.” People ask, “what is it?” He said, “your clothes caught on fire.” The person turned around and jumped up. He got extremely angry and shouted, “why did you say it early?” The patience person replied, “that’s my point. You get impatience and frustrated easily.”

The second story says, there was a person who was extremely impatient. He knew it himself and told his wife, “if there is another person in the world who is more impatient than me existing, I will kill myself.” One day, this impatient man went to a noodle shop and he couldn’t wait but said, “please give me noodles.” The owner brought the noodles to him right away and dump the noodles on the table said, “eat that way because I need to rush to wash the bowl.” The man got angry and told him wife when he got home and said, “I need to follow my promise and die.” His wife heard and left the house and married another man right away on the same day. The next day, after spending a night with the new husband, the new husband wanted to get divorced with the woman. The woman asked ,”what did I do wrong?” The new husband replied, “because you didn’t give birth to our children yet.”